EViews 7 Feature List

EViews 7 offers a extensive array of powerful features for data handling, statistics and econometric analysis, forecasting and simulation, data presentation, and programming. While we can't possible list everything, the following list offers a glimpse at the important EViews features:

Support for high-frequency (intraday) data, allowing for hours, minutes, and seconds frequencies. In addition, there are a number of less commonly encountered regular frequencies, including Multi-year, Bimonthly, Fortnight, Ten-Day, and Daily with an arbitrary range of days of the week.

Factor analysis allowing computation of measures of association (including covariance and correlation), uniqueness estimates, factor loading estimates and factor scores, as well as performing estimation diagnostics and factor rotation using one of over 30 different orthogonal and oblique methods.

ARMA equation diagnostics: graphs or tables of the inverse roots of the AR and/or MA characteristic polynomial, compare the theoretical (estimated) autocorrelation pattern with the actual correlation pattern for the structural residuals, display the ARMA impulse response to an innovation shock and the ARMA frequency spectrum.

EViews COM automation server support so that external programs or scripts can launch or control EViews, transfer data, and execute EViews commands.

EViews offers COM Automation client support application for MATLAB and R servers so that EViews may be used to launch or control the application, transfer data, or execute commands.

The EViews Excel Add-in offers a simple interface for fetching and linking from within Microsoft Excel (2000 and later) to series and matrix objects stored in EViews workfiles and databases.

Peformance

Improved Peformance

EViews 7 performance has been enhanced through careful optimization and fine-tuning, along with the addition of multi-processor support. These improvements combine to make Version 7 the fastest EViews ever.

Computational Tune-Up

As part of a general effort to improve performance, a variety of key computational routines and algorithms have been scrutinized and tuned for optimal performance. The result is that most statistical computations in EViews are now significantly faster. You should definitely notice the difference in formerly long-running routines, most notably in iterative or complicated procedures.

Multi-processor Support

EViews 7 has been retooled to take advantage of multiple-processor cores. And you don't have to do a thing to enable multi-core support. By default, EViews 7 will automatically sense whether your computer sports more than one processor core and will optimize its calculations accordingly (using all of the cores).

If you wish, you may override this setting for up to eight threads. This allows you to increase the number of threads EViews uses to beyond the physical number of cores. We have not found this to be effective, but, in principle, it could improve performance with hyper-threading. If you require more processing power for other applications, you may wish to limit the number of threads EViews uses by setting this number below the physical number of cores. This is guaranteed to work with Intel processors, and, to our knowledge, should work with other brands of processors as well.

To take advantage of the user-specified settings, go to the Options/General Options dialog in the main EViews menu. The Multi-processor/Multi-core use section may be used to define the maximum number of threads you would like to allow EViews to use when processing statistical calculations. EViews treats processors and cores symmetrically, and does not include hyper-threaded processors. In general, we recommend leaving this setting at Auto. You may click on the Reset to EViews Defaults button to return to the default settings.

EViews Interface

Updated Interface

EViews has always been known for its unmatched ease-of-use, but there's always room for improvement. We've raised the ante in EViews 7 with a number of interface improvements. Here are but a few of the highlights:

Customizable Appearance

Choice is good. And EViews 7 now offers you choice in the appearance of your EViews window so that you may customize the appearance of your EViews environment to use different colors for windows, backgrounds, toolbars, and status bars.

Central to the new appearance options are "themes" providing various "looks" for your EViews window. To access the themes and other appearance settings, go to the main EViews window and select Options/General Options to display the dialog. Select a theme, specify modifications if desired, and off you go.

Changing your theme won't make EViews 7 run any faster, but a fresh new look might make the work seem to go a bit faster.

Enhanced Drag-and-Drop Support

Drag-and-drop support has been enhanced throughout EViews 7. You may now copy objects between workfiles and pages using drag-and-drop. You can even use drag-and-drop to copy entire workfile pages and to retrieve objects from an EViews database.

For example, you may:

Create a new workfile page and copy the contents of an existing workfile page or foreign source file by dragging the source file or tab and dropping it over the New Page tab in a workfile. A plus ("+") sign will appear when your cursor is over an appropriate area. Alternately, drag the workfile page tab into the open area in the EViews window; a new workfile will be created, and the contents of the source page will be copied into the first page of the new workfile.

Use drag-and-drop to reorder your workfile pages. You may change the order of your workfile pages by dragging the tab for a page at the bottom of the workfile window, and dropping it on top of the tab for the page it should follow. Note the difference in behavior between dragging a tab within a workfile and dragging across workfiles. The first reorders the pages, while the second copies the contents of one page into another.

Combine the contents of two pages by dragging the source page tab onto the destination page window. Depending on the objects being copied and the frequencies of the workfiles, you may receive a series of prompts to assist in completing the paste properly.

Copy a set of EViews objects from within a page by selecting them and drag them where you'd like them to go. The destination object, whether it be a workfile, group, program, model, or the command window, will attempt to accept the paste of the objects. A plus ("+") sign will appear when your cursor is over an appropriate area. Depending on the objects being copied, you may receive a series of prompts to complete the paste.

There are a variety of ways in which EViews objects may be dropped onto other objects. You may add a seriesto a group either by dragging the series icon onto the Spreadsheet view of the group or by dragging it onto the Group Members view of the group. To add an equation to a model, drag the equation icon from the workfile into the equation view of the model.

Mean equality tests (ANOVA) now perform tests both under the standard maintained assumption of equal variances across subgroups, and now, under the assumption that the variances are heteroskedastic (Welch 1951, Satterthwaite 1946).

Improved Command Interface

Command Editing

EViews 7 adds new features to make editing in the command window even easier. To display a list of previous commands in the order in which they were entered, press the Control key and the UP arrow (CTRL+UP). The last command will be entered into the command window. Holding down the CTRL key and pressing UP repeatedly will display the next prior commands. Repeat until the desired command is recalled.

To examine a history of the last 30 commands, press the Control Key and the J key (CTRL+J). In the popup window you may use the UP and DOWN arrows to select the desired command and then press the ENTER key to add it to the command window, or simply double click on the command. To close the history window without selecting a command, click elsewhere in the command window or press the Escape (ESC) key.

Command Window Undocking

Feeling a bit constrained in the traditional command window? You may now drag the command window to anywhere inside the EViews frame. Press F4 to toggle docking, or click on the command window, depress the right-mouse button and select Toggle Command Docking. When undocked, the command window toolbar contains buttons for displaying commands in the list, and for redocking.

Updated Graph Options Dialog

EViews has always offered a large number of options for customizing your graph output, and EViews 7 offers even more. To better organize all of these options, we have completely redesigned the EViews global and object graph options dialogs so that they use an easy-to-use tree structure. You will find that most of the options are functionally the same, but they have been broken into smaller categories. Instead of tabs along the top of a dialog, we utilize a descriptive tree structure that runs along the left side of the dialog. Simply click on a tree node to display the relevant options in manageable form.

As always, if you double-click on an applicable graph-element (the legend, axes, etc.), EViews will open to the corresponding dialog tree entry.

Updated Global Options Dialog

The various global options dialogs have been consolidated into a single General Options dialog, featuring an easy-to-use tree structure so you may navigate quickly between sets of settings.

In addition to reorganizing the existing material, there are important new settings in this dialog:

Under the first group, Windows Appearance, you will find a dialog that you may use to set various EViews color palettes using themes.

Advanced system options offers control over multi-processor/core use.

Runtime settings, under the Programs group, offers global settings for the new program log message settings that allow you to control which messages are output to the log window.

EViews Auto-Update from the Web

EViews 7 offers an automatic updating feature that can check for new updates every day, and install any updates that may be available. The automatic update feature can be disabled from the Options/EViews Auto-Update from Web item in your main EViews menu. You can also manually check for updates from within EViews at any time by selecting Check now... under the EViews Auto-Update from Web menu item, or by selecting EViews Update from the Help menu.

Data Handling

New Data Handling Features

EViews 7 offers a number of features for data handling. Among the highlights:

New Workfile Frequencies

EViews 7 offers built-in support for high-frequency (intraday) data, allowing for hours, minutes, and seconds frequencies. In addition, there are a number of new workfile frequencies, including Multi-year, Bimonthly, Fortnight, Ten-Day, and Daily with an arbitrary range of days of the week.

Easy-to-use dialogs let you describe regular frequency intraday data. Simply provide information about the frequency of observations within the day, the days of the week for which you observe data, and the time, and the time range of observations within a day. More complicated irregular frequency data structures may be created by specifying a data series containing the date/time information for each observation.

In addition, newly introduced special workfile functions (@HOUR, @MINUTE, @SECOND, and @HOURF) have been added to provide intraday information for each observation in the workfile.

Strings

Strings and string processing assume a newly prominent role in EViews 7. Central to this importance are the introduction of the concept of string lists, an expanded library of string functions that includes routines for string list processing, new objects for holding strings (string and svector), and enhanced programming support for working with strings.

The enhanced role for strings opens the door to a wide range of operations and greatly enhances the existing EViews programming language.

Direct Support for the FRED Database

FRED� (Federal Reserve Economic Data) is a publicly accessible database of more than 20,000 U.S. time series of multiple frequencies, provided by the Economic Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The FRED database offers a wide variety of freely downloadable data, including interest rates, exchange rates, national income accounts, and many others. Data found in FRED are drawn from several national and international sources and are updated frequently. Did we mention that FRED data are free?

Prior to EViews 7, importing data from FRED required that the data first be downloaded into either a Microsoft Excel or text file, and then be imported into an EViews workfile. EViews users can now use EViews to directly connect to, open, query, and import data from the FRED database using the familiar EViews database interface.

Support for Reading Excel XLSX Files

The Excel 2007 default XLSX format is based on open XML standards. Excel 2007 files are incompatible with older versions of Excel and could not be read by EViews 6.

EViews 7 offers read (but not write) support for XLSX files.

Improved Foreign Data Import

EViews 7 offers a new command for importing data from a foreign file (or previously saved workfile) into an existing workfile. You can, for example, use the new import command to merge data from an Excel file into your workfile, or to append data from a SPSS file into an existing workfile.

Graphs

New Graph Features

EViews 7 graphs take a big step forward with the ability to update when underlying data change and the ability to interactively identify observation information. And that's just the start�

Auto-Updating Graphs

The most important graphics improvement in EViews 7 is the addition of auto-updating graphs.

Previously, when you created a graph object by freezing an object view, the data in the graph was fixed to the values at the time of creation. You could use EViews tools for customization, many of which were available only for graph objects, to change the look of the graph, but the underlying data could not be changed. Moreover, if the data subsequently changed, you would have to create a new graph by freezing an updated object view and then reapply any customization.

Frozen graph objects may now be linked to the series or group from which they were created. You may determine if and when a frozen graph should update as the sample or its underlying data change. Thus, you may treat a frozen graph as a snapshot of the data at the time it was frozen, as in previous versions of EViews, or allow it to update as data change.

Observation Info Display

EViews 7 allows you to closely examine points on a graph by hovering the cursor over the data point you wish to identify. If the point is inside the data portion of the graph, EViews will popup a box showing the observation label and value.

Alternately, if you hover over any point inside the graph frame, EViews will display the location of that point in the statusline located in the lower left-hand corner of your EViews window.

Updated Graph Options Dialog

EViews has always offered a large number of options for customizing your graph output, and EViews 7 offers even more. To better organize all of these options, we have completely redesigned the EViews global and object graph options dialogs so that they use an easy-to-use tree structure. You will find that most of the options are functionally the same, but they have been broken into smaller categories. Instead of tabs along the top of a dialog, we utilize a descriptive tree structure that runs along the left side of the dialog. Simply click on a tree node to display the relevant options in manageable form.

As always, if you double-click on an applicable graph-element (the legend, axes, etc.), EViews will open to the corresponding dialog tree entry.

Date Label Formatting

EViews 7 offers improved control over the formatting of your date labels. In particular, the EViews automatic date formatting setting now allows you to specify a set of guidelines for displaying dates that will be used by EViews when automatically forming labels.

Custom Observation Labels

You may now specify custom observation labels using the text or values of an alpha or numeric series. The labels in the graph are updated as the values of the alpha or series change.

Date Label Positioning

EViews 7 provides improved control over the positioning of your date labels. You may specify whether the labels are centered over period intervals, or whether they are placed at the beginning of the interval. You may change the automatic label and tick placement to label the start or center of the period.

Depending on the frequency of your graph, date labeling can be made clearer if we include a second row of labels. You may instruct EViews to utilize a second row of labels where appropriate. For example, daily data can be labeled first by month, with a second row of labels indicating the year; quarterly data can be labeled both by quarter and by year.

Grid Lines

You may now control the placement of grid lines on the date axis (observation scale) of a graph.

In addition to the previously supported "No grid lines" and "Automatic grid placement", EViews 7 now offers custom grid steps so that you may, for example, choose to override the automatic settings to place grid lines only on year boundaries.

Programming Support

Programming Improvements

A primary goal of EViews 7 was to improve the support for developing EViews programs. With improvements ranging from the large (functions to create user-defined dialogs and string list processing) to the small (single-keystroke commenting of a block of program lines) EViews 7 ofers tools designed to make your life as a programmer that much easier.

User-Defined Dialogs

Have you ever wanted to interact with a running EViews .prg programs, say to provide additional input or retrieve information? Well, EViews 7 offers the abiilty to construct several types of user-interface controls, or dialogs, within your program. These dialogs permit users to input variables or set options during the running of the program, and allow you to to pass information back to users.

There are five new functions for creating dialogs in EViews:

@uiprompt - creates a prompt control, which displays a message to the user.

@uiedit - creates an edit control, which lets users input text.

@uilist - creates a list control, which lets users select from a list of choices.

@uiradio - creates a set of radio controls, which lets users select from a set of choices.

@uidialog - creates a dialog which contains a mixture of other controls.

Each dialog function returns an integer indicating how the user exited the dialog.

Strings

The programming language tools for working with strings have been greatly enhanced EViews 7. In addition to an expanded library of string functions, EViews 7 introduces list processing and provides new string and string vector objects to hold string results from the workfile structure.

Program language syntax has also been extended to support the increased prominence of strings. You should find it much easier to produce programs that manipulate and use strings. Notably, you may now use string replacement variables recursively, so that a string replacement variable may itself be obtained from a replacement variable (e.g., "{{%x}}" refers to the variable referred to by the contents of the string "%x").

EViews 6 allowed you to use control ("!") variables and string ("%") variables in defining FOR loops. You could not, however, use a scalar objects in a loop definition. EViews 7 extends the syntax for loops to allow use of both scalar and string objects. More generally, all variables byles (control, scalar, string literal, string object) may now be used in virtually all programming contexts..

Object Data Members

Recall that every object type in EViews has a selection of data members. These members contain information about the object and can be retrieved from an object to be used as part of another command, or stored into the workfile as a new object. Data members can be accessed by typing the object name followed by a period and then the data member name. Note that all data members' names start with an "@" symbol.

To improve your ability to write general use programs, EViews 7 offers an expanded set of object data members that provide access to information about the object.

For example, the following new data members belong to every object type in EViews:

Data Member

Description

@description

Returns a description of the object (if available)

@displayname

Returns the display name of the object. If the object has no display name, the name is returned

@name

Returns the name of the object

@remarks

Returns the remarks field of the object (if available)

@source

Returns the source field of the object (if available)

@type

Returns a string containing the object type

@units

Returns a string describing units of the object (if available)

@updatetime

Returns the string representation of the time the object was last updated

More generally, each object type has a set of new data members specific to that type. Most notably, equation and other estimation objects now allow you to obtain text information about the specification and sample used in estimation.

Program Logging

It is sometimes useful to keep track of what is happening during execution of a program. EViews 7 new log windows allow you to record the state of various objects in your workfile or follow program progression.

Log windows are automatically created when a program is executed, if logging has been turned on. One log window is created for each program. If a program is executed more than once and a log window has already been created, the log window will be cleared and all subsequent messages will go to the existing log window. If you wish to preserve a log, you may either save the log to a text file or freeze it, creating a text file object.

There are several types of messages which can be logged: program lines, status line messages, user log messages, and program errors. When displayed in a log message, each type will appear in a different color, making it easier to differentiate one type from another. Program lines are reiterations of the line of code in the program currently being executed and are displayed in black. Status line messages are the messages displayed in the status line and appear in blue. User log messages are custom messages created by the program via the See logmsg. command and appear in green. Program errors are messages generated when a logical or syntactical error has occurred and appear in red.

Comment Lines

EViews 7 provides new tools for easily commenting and uncommenting of blocks of lines in the EViews program file editor.

A block of lines may be commented or uncommented in the editor by highlighting the lines, right-mouse clicking, and selecting Comment Selection or Uncomment Selection. Alternately, you may also use CTRL-K to comment and CTRL-U to uncomment lines.

Text Objects

Text objects have additional data members that should make them more useful for holding blocks of text information that do not naturally fit in an alpha series, string, or string vector. In addition, you may now more easily move text into and out of a text object.

General Information Functions

One development focus in EViews 7 has been to offer more functions for obtaining information of use to users writing EViews programs. Along with a host of new object data member functions, EViews features new functions for looking up objects in the workfile or files in a directory, for obtaining information about the current workfile (number of pages, names of pages, structure of pages, sample), and for retrieving information about the EViews environment (version number, produce name).

External Interfaces

EViews 7 Exernal Inteface Features

EViews 7 continues our ongoing effort to better integrate with other applications. Newly added COM Automation support, a new OLEDB driver, and an Excel-Add in make this the most connected EViews ever.

The Excel Add-in

The EViews Excel Add-in offers a simple interface for fetching and linking from within Microsoft Excel (2000 and later) to series and matrix objects stored in EViews workfiles and databases.

Installation of the EViews Excel Add-in is an option during the normal EViews installation procedure. Once installed and activated from within Microsoft Excel, you may use the Add-in to retrieve data from EViews databases and workfiles without leaving Excel.

You may choose to retrieve the EViews data via a simple import, or using an import and link in which Excel will automatically refresh the data when the EViews workfile or database changes.

The EViews OLEDB Driver

External applications may now use OLEDB to read data stored in EViews workfiles (WF1) and EViews databases (EDB). The EViews OLEDB driver provides an easy-to-use interface for programs to read EViews data.

The EViews OLEDB driver is automatically installed and registered on your computer when you install EViews 7. Once installed, you may use OLEDB-aware clients or custom programs to read series, vector, and matrix objects directly from EViews workfiles and databases.

EViews COM Automation Server

EViews offers COM Automation server support so that external programs or scripts can launch or control EViews, transfer data, and execute EViews commands.

EViews may be used as a COM Automation server so that an external program or script may launch and control EViews programmatically. EViews COM is comprised of two class objects: Manager and Application.

The Manager class is used to manage and create instances of the main EViews Application class. The Application class provides access to EViews functionality and data. Most notably, the Application class Run and a variety of Get and Put methods provide you with access to EViews commands and allow you to obtain read or write access to series, vectors, matrix, and scalar objects.

Note that web server access to EViews via COM is not allowed. Furthermore, EViews will limit COM access to a single instance when run by other Windows services or run remotely via Distributed COM.

EViews COM Automation Client Support (MATLAB and R)

EViews offers COM Automation client support application for MATLAB and R servers so that EViews may be used to launch or control the application, transfer data, or execute commands.

The client support includes a set of EViews functions for exporting an EViews data object into the external application, running commands and programs in the application, and importing data back into EViews. These functions provide easy access to the powerful programming languages of MATLAB and R to create programs and routines that perform tasks not currently implemented in EViews. The interface also offers access to the large library of statistical routines already written in the MATLAB and R languages.

There are six EViews commands that control the use of external applications: xclose, xget, xlog, xopen, xput, and xrun.

xopen and xclose are used to open and close a connection to the external application (MATLAB or R). xput and xget are used to send data to and from the external application. xrun is used to send a command to the external application, and, finally, xlog lets you show or hide an external application log window within EViews.

EViews 7 New Econometrics and Statistics: Computation

EViews 7 features a number of additions and improvements to its toolbox of basic statistical procedures. Among the highlights are new tools for interpolation, whitening regression, long-run covariance calculation, variance ratio testing, and single-equation cointegration testing.

Interpolation

EViews 7 now offers built-in interpolation series to fill in missing values within a series. EViews offers a number of different algorithms for performing the interpolation: Linear, Log-Linear, the Catmull-Rom Spline, and the Cardinal Spline.

Whitening

EViews now offers easy-to-use tools for whitening a series or group of series using AR or VAR regressions, respectively. Whitening can be performed with or without a constant and row weights, using a fixed or info-criterion based lag selection. The coefficients of the whitening regression may be saved.

Long-run Covariances

You may now compute estimates of the long-run variance of a series or the long-run covariance matrix of a group of series. You will find this feature in the View menu of a series or a group object.

EViews provides powerful, easy-to-use tools for computing, displaying, and saving the long-run covariance (variance) matrix of a single series or all of the series in a group object. You may compute symmetric or one-sided long-run covariances using nonparametric kernel (Newey-West 1987, Andrews 1991), parametric VARHAC (Den Haan and Levin 1997), and prewhitened kernel (Andrews and Monahan 1992) methods. In addition, EViews supports Andrews (1991) and Newey-West (1994) automatic bandwidth selection methods for kernel estimators, and information criteria based lag length selection methods for VARHAC and prewhitening estimation.

By default, EViews will estimate the symmetric long-run covariance matrix using a non-parametric kernel estimator with a Bartlett kernel and a real-valued bandwidth determined solely using the number of observations. The data will be centered (by subtracting off means) prior to computing the kernel covariance estimator, but no other pre-whitening will be performed. The results will only be displayed in the series or group window. You may use the dialog to change these settings.

Variance Ratio Testing

EViews 7 now has built-in variance ratio testing. The variance ratio test view allows you to perform the Lo and MacKinlay variance ratio test to determine whether differences in a series are uncorrelated, or follow a random walk or martingale property.

EViews provides a range of testing options. You may perform the Lo and MacKinlay variance ratio test for homoskedastic and heteroskedastic random walks, using the asymptotic normal distribution (Lo and MacKinlay, 1988) or wild bootstrap (Kim, 2006) to evaluate statistical significance. In addition, you may compute the rank, rank-score, or sign-based forms of the test (Wright, 2000), with bootstrap evaluation of significance. In addition, EViews offers Wald and multiple comparison variance ratio tests (Richardson and Smith, 1991; Chow and Denning, 1993), so you may perform joint tests of the variance ratio restriction for several intervals.

The residual based tests may be computed as a View of a Group object, or as a diagnostic view for an equation estimated using one of the cointegrating regression techniques.

EViews 7 New Econometrics and Statistics: Estimation

EViews 7 new estimation features include improved IV and GMM estimation, sophisticated tools for performing cointegrating regression, and estimation of Generalized Linear Models.

Instrumental Variables and GMM Estimation

The algorithms for Instrumental Variables/Two-stage Least Squares estimation of models specified by expression with AR terms has been improved significantly. Limited Information Maximum Likelihood (LIML) and K-class estimation is now available as a single equation estimation method. New options allow you to choose from an expanded set of robust standard error calculations and to not include the constant as an instrument in TSLS.

Single equation GMM has been completely overhauled. There is an expanded set of options for the HAC weighting matrix (nonparametric kernel (Newey-West 1987, Andrews 1991), parametric VARHAC (Den Haan and Levin 1997), and prewhitened kernel (Andrews and Monahan 1992) methods, Andrews (1991) and Newey-West (1994) automatic bandwidth selection methods for kernel estimators, and information criteria based lag length selection methods for VARHAC and prewhitening estimation), the ability to not include a constant as an instrument, the ability to estimate via continuously updating estimation (CUE), and a host of new standard error options, including Windmeijer standard errors. You may now specify prior observation weights.

GMM also offers the ability to save the weighting matrix from estimation and standard error computation, or to use a user-supplied weighting matrix as part of estimation. These features allow the user to estimate a GMM model using the weighting matrix from a previously estimated GMM model.

All three types of IV estimation offer new diagnostics and tests, including a Instrument Orthogonality Test, a Regressor Endogeneity Test, a Weak Instrument Test, and a GMM specific breakpoint test.

EViews 7 supports estimation of Generalized Linear Models (Nelder and McCullagh, 1983). This class of models generalizes classical linear regression to include a broad range of specifications that have proven to be useful in practice. Among these models are log-linear regression, standard probit and logit, probit and logit specified by proportions, and regression with count or survival data.

A wide range of family, link, dispersion estimation, and estimation options are offered, allowing for computation of various robust standard error and QMLE specifications.

The specification of weights in Weighted Least Squares has been generalized so that you may now provide your weights in inverse variance, standard deviation, or variance form. Previously weights were only specified in inverse standard deviation form. Additionally, you may now control whether or not to scale the weight series prior to use. Together, these options should make it easier to match intermediate calculations and results of other sources.

EViews 7 New Econometrics and Statistics: Diagnostics

EViews 7 features a number of additions and improvements its extensive set of basic diagnostics. Notably additions include greatly expanded options for single equation robust covariances, a variety of new single-equation post-estimation diagnostics, and specialized diagnostics for equations estimated using instrumental variables and GMM.

There is now an option to turn off the degrees-of-freedom adjustment to standard errors.

More importantly, an expanded range of HAC covariance options mirrors those for the stand-alone covariance calculations. You may compute symmetric or one-sided long-run covariances using nonparametric kernel (Newey-West 1987, Andrews 1991), parametric VARHAC (Den Haan and Levin 1997), and prewhitened kernel (Andrews and Monahan 1992) methods. In addition, EViews supports Andrews (1991) and Newey-West (1994) automatic bandwidth selection methods for kernel estimators, and information criteria based lag length selection methods for VARHAC and prewhitening estimation. The new options may be found by selecting HAC in the Coefficient covariance matrix combo box on the Options page of the Equation dialog, and then pressing the HAC Options button.

Expanded Post-Estimation Diagnostics

The new Scaled Coefficients view displays the coefficient estimates, the standardized coefficient estimates and the elasticity at means. The standardized coefficients are the point estimates of the coefficients standardized by multiplying by the standard deviation of the dependent variable divided by the standard deviation of the regressor. The elasticity at means are the point estimates of the coefficients scaled by the mean of the dependent variable divided by the mean of the regressor.

The Confidence Intervals view displays a table of confidence intervals for each of the coefficients in the equation. The Confidence Intervals dialog allows you to enter the size of the confidence levels. These can be entered a space delimited list of decimals, or as the name of a scalar or vector in the workfile containing confidence levels. You can also choose how you would like to display the confidence intervals. By default they will be shown in pairs where the low and high values for each confidence level are shown next to each other.

EViews 7 now displays Variance Inflation Factors. Variance Inflation Factors (VIFs) are a method of measuring the level of collinearity between the regressors in an equation. VIFs show how much of the variance of a coefficient estimate of a regressor has been inflated due to collinearity with the other regressors.

The new Coefficient Variance Decomposition view of an equation provides information on the eigenvector decomposition of the coefficient covariance matrix. This decomposition is a useful tool to help diagnose potential collinearity problems amongst the regressors. The decomposition calculations follow those given in Belsley, Kuh and Welsch (2004).

Influence statistics are a method of discovering influential observations, or outliers. They are a measure of the difference that a single observation makes to the regression results, or how different an observation is from the other observations in an equation�s sample. EViews provides a selection of six different influence statistics: RStudent, DRResid, DFFITS, CovRatio, HatMatrix and DFBETAS.

Leverage plots are the multivariate equivalent of a simple residual plot in a univariate regression. Like influence statistics, leverage plots can be used as a method for identifying influential observations or outliers, as well as a method of graphically diagnosing any potential failures of the underlying assumptions of a regression model.

The ARMA frequency spectrum view of an ARMA equation shows the spectrum of the estimated ARMA terms in the frequency domain, rather than the typical time domain. Whereas viewing the ARMA terms in the time domain lets you view the autocorrelation functions of the data, viewing them in the frequency domain lets you observe more complicated cyclical characteristics.

TSLS and GMM Diagnostics

The Instrument Summary view of an equation is available for non-panel equations estimated by GMM, TSLS or LIML. The summary will display the number of instruments specified, the instrument specification, and a list of the instruments that were used in estimation.

The Instrument Orthogonality test, also known as the C-test or Eichenbaum, Hansen and Singleton (EHS) Test, evaluates the othogonality condition of a sub-set of the instruments. This test is available for non-panel equations estimated by TSLS or GMM.

The Regressor Endogeneity Test, also known as the Durbin-Wu-Hausman Test, tests for the endogeneity of some, or all, of the equation regressors. This test is available for non-panel equations estimated by TSLS or GMM.

A regressor is endogenous if it is explained by the instruments in the model, whereas exogenous variables are those which are not explained by instruments. In EViews� TSLS and GMM estimation, exogenous variables may be specified by including a variable as both a regressor and an instrument, whereas endogenous variable are those which are specified in the regressor list only.

The Weak Instrument Diagnostics view provides diagnostic information on the instruments used during estimation. This information includes the Cragg-Donald statistic, the associated Stock and Yugo critical values, and Moment Selection Criteria (MSC). The Cragg-Donald statistic and its critical values are available for equations estimated by TSLS, GMM or LIML, but the MSC are available for equations estimated by TSLS or GMM only.